Original artwork, not a still
The Handmaid's Tale ‧ 1985
Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
It is the novel's most chilling piece of social psychology: no regime has to be believable on day one, it only has to last long enough to become routine. Readers quote it about any slow erosion of rights, from protest signs to news commentary, usually to say that the danger is the getting-used-to.
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In context
Spoilers for The Handmaid's TaleShow the scene
Aunt Lydia is the instructor at the Red Centre, the training school where Gilead turns women into Handmaids, and her sayings run through Offred's narration whenever she remembers her months there. In this one Lydia tells the trainees that the new order will stop feeling strange, because what people live with every day becomes what they call normal. Atwood published the novel in 1985; it took the Governor General's Award that year and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987.
Sources (1)
- The Handmaid's Tale (Wikipedia)whole pageReference checked
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